Saturday, 27 February 2016

Now normally I don't do plugs or tell my followers or the average punter
online to do this or buy that, but this is something very special and
something very close to me that I feel the need to share it with anyone
who will listen, and who wants to laugh.

For those who don't follow me ormy special animation blog, Very Strange Things: Journey of An Animated Series, Keith Matthews
was the manager of the Oxfam charity bookstore I work at, and was a
vastly talented actor, musician, theatre director, and writer in various
mediums. He performed in many shows over 45 years, as well as being an
expert on the UK radio game show Just a Minute (on which he
contributed to two published books as a consultant with his almost
encyclopedic knowledge). In the midst of all this and acting as a carer
for his frail mother, he found the time to write a ridiculously large
number of plays, poems, short stories and novel length works. He was a
friendly, welcoming and trusting man who always had your back and would
help you anyway he can. Be it practical advice or even cracking a joke,
Keith could work wonders and even meeting the likes of Peter O'Toole,
Kenneth Williams and Paul Merton didn't go to his head.

Sadly,
Keith passed away at the still youthful and lively age of 55 in June of
last year. It was a shock to all of us, me not just because he had been
assisting my animation project by directing an audio adaptation of the
pilot for use as an animatic track, but because he and I had been
discussing our own projects and my anxieties over the future, now that I
had left University. He had just finished helping out on the most
recent Just A Minute book, and his spirits were never higher. As his coffin passed into the incinerator, accompanied to the tune of Somewhere Over The Rainbow
from his favourite film, I thought that was the end of it. Keith's
amazing talents and gifts would be remembered by a select few, but
ultimately be forgotten to history.

But then, life had other
plans: during the twilight of last year, his close friend and fellow
thespian Richard Taylor managed to compile Keith's various manuscripts
and through Amazon's CreateSpace, finally got Keith's life works published in a series of volumes. Click on the link to go to the special Amazon UK page which lists the following:

Poems, Stories and Song Lyrics: A collection of just that, including the very touching Real Life Dreams, which was read at his funeral.

Fiction and Fact: 11 Short Stories and Novelettes: another self-explanatory collection, offering a mixtures of thinkers, shockers and knee slappers.

All Three Volumes of S.O.S (Save Our Souls):
Probably Keith's pride and joy, S.O.S is a semi-autobiographical sitcom
series of plays that tells of the hijinks at a charity store. He had
performed it before, many years back with a full cast at the Oxfam, and
had even gotten talking to a producer at BBC Radio (3, if memory serves)
about going one step further. Needlessly to say, the audience lapped it
up and Keith took great pleasure in the series' power to make them
laugh.

All five are available on paperback and kindle, each
for under £5, well below what similar books would sell normally. If you
can spare the change for even one of them, please do so. Keith had a
unique gift in life, and now even after he's gone, I hope he will
continue to bring joy into the lives of others for years to come. It's
how he lived, and it's how he would've liked to be remembered.

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About Me

A man spinning many plates: filmmaker, author, critic and all around circus clown. Or magician, depending on your viewpoint.
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